If something doesn’t change soon, the American Dream project in the Meadowlands – and its lack of advance – may soon rival Jimmy Hoffa’s death place as a raconteur’s fall-back running joke.

Getting a laugh out of the audience can be tough at a forum on the New Jersey economy. But John Galandak, president of the Paramus-based Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey, managed it by mentioning the former-Xanadu project at the Northern New Jersey Business Outlook forum at Ramapo College.

Describing the project as “that series of buildings that looks like transportation cargo containers that have been piled up,” Galandak noted that project boosters had hoped to have the multi-colored complex open in time for the 2014 Superbowl.

“Probably not going to happen at this point,” Galandak said, to some chuckles from the audience. “I think it would be somewhat of a miracle.”

He then joked that if the project opened on time the developer should “call it American Miracle, rather than American Dream!”

A subsequent speaker, Robert P. Topel, a marketing vice-president for UPS, got his own laugh out of the project, when he mentioned driving by it with his two sixteen-year-old daughters, and noting it was still under construction.

“They said, ‘Well Dad, that ought to be a priority,” he added, and joked: “You can’t have too much mall for 16-year-old girls!”

Clearly, none of them got the memo that American Dream is an “entertainment center” – not a mall!